Building a business demands mastery across sales, marketing, operations, hiring, accounting, and taxes, not just your product. Most founders waste their existing networks of former colleagues and classmates. Success also requires the mindset to handle constant challenges.
If you're in your first year as an entrepreneur, listen up. Entrepreneurship is 5 times harder than what most people think. See, you have to learn your own trade, your own craft, the service that you offer, and that requires time and learning and reading and attending conferences. And then you have to learn about every other aspect of the business— sales, marketing, operations, hiring people, managing people, working with contractors, accounting, taxes— all of that takes a lot of time, and at times there's a steep learning curve. And then you have to have the right mindset to deal with everything that's coming at you all at once. And the second thing that I want you to really pay attention to is that you are most likely underutilizing your network. See, we have ex-colleagues, we have ex-roommates, we have ex-classmates. So go out there and work your network, and it will pay off. And when you make it and you make it big, also help others and reciprocate.
